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MSI Eclipse SLI Review

Testing:

To see just what kind of performance the MSI Eclipse SLI is capable of I will run it through the OverclockersClub benchmarking suite. This contains synthetic and gaming benchmarks to show how it performs. I will compare the Eclipse against the P6T Deluxe OC and our current testing platform with an Intel QX9770 instead of the usual Q9450 you are used to seeing. This will give a comparison against a current platform as well as the last generation's best processor on a high performing X48 based motherboard. All of the stock testing is run with the factory default settings in the BIOS, save for manually setting the memory clock speeds, voltage and processor voltage. On the X58 boards Turbo mode has been disabled to eliminate any variables due to changing clock speeds during single and multi threaded benchmarks. SMT was enabled during testing as well. To overclock the Eclipse SLI I will push the limits and try to show results that should be easily duplicated based on the capabilities of your CPU and system memory.

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

Processor: Intel Core I7 965 205x19 1.4125 volts

Sytem Memory: Qimonda 3x1GB 9-9-9-24 822 MHz 1.64volts

Setting the I7 965 up to run at stock speeds is a no brainer really, but to push the limits it took a little bit of trial and error. Well, a lot of trial and error. There are a few ways to go when overclocking the Core I7 processor and system. You can up the baseclock or if you have an unlocked processor the multiplier can be increased while maintaining the lower overall baseclock (133MHz). The first BIOS was not all that overclocking friendly, but the 132b BIOS changed that. Just upping the baseclock alone is not enough to get you up to the 200MHz level. Whereas the P6T was incredibly resilient when it came to recovering from a bad overclock, the MSI was not nearly as friendly. It would more often than not fail to boot after pushing the limits just to have to clear the CMOS. This resulted in a total loss of your settings so taking good notes is essential. Touching just about all of the voltages was required to get to 205x19 and 822MHz on the six gigabytes of system memory. To get there the Vcore was bumped to 1.42, the memory to 1.64v, the QPI voltage to 1.425, and the IOH to 1.4v as well as bumping the timings to the modules' default 9-9-9-24. I could boot up to a 215MHz baseclock but could not gain any stability at this level.